


The Fight or Flight Response

by hauntedd



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Clones, Gen, Post-Season/Series 02, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-18
Updated: 2015-04-18
Packaged: 2018-03-23 14:54:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3772468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedd/pseuds/hauntedd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Project Castor.  Project Leda.   She’s not a <i>project</i>, she’s a bloody person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fight or Flight Response

“I don’t care if he asks for me a hundred times. Keep that shite away from me.” Sarah shouts once the guard lets her down to the ground, the door closed and locked behind her. Her fight or flight response flies into overdrive and since they stopped her from hitting him, every fiber of her body screams at her to run and get the hell out before it’s too late. Top Side and the rest can figure the latest chapter of clone on clone shit on their own.

“You hear that, yeah? I’m _done_.” 

No one answers her and she tries to ignore the hammering in her chest. She just got out of the fucked up dungeon Rachel'd put her in—she can’t be trapped again. She can’t. No wonder Beth killed herself. This shit never ends.

“Sarah?” 

Sarah jumps at the sound of the familiar voice and heads toward it. She doesn’t have a choice if she wants to get out of here, and Cos deserves to know all that her monitor has been up to behind the scenes.

“Delphine.” Of bloody course Delphine would be here—Sarah isn’t even surprised that the blonde is somehow involved.

She always is.

“Marion had to take a phone call—I see that you met our visitor.”

Sarah rolls her eyes and rakes a hand through her hair. This is not what she came here for. She'd been promised answers, only to get more bloody bullshit and threats as they tried to pull her down the rabbit hole.

Project Castor. Project Leda. She’s not a _project_ , she’s a bloody person. 

“Your prisoner, you mean?” 

Delphine purses her lips at the accusation, but says nothing. Sarah’s mind wanders to how Kira’s name had fallen from Rudy’s lips. It reminds her of Rachel. Kira, to them, is a prize to be won, one worth dying for.

She won’t have it. She can’t.

“Look. Do whatever you bloody well please with that one. I don't care, just keep him the hell away from me and my family.”

“Sarah—“ 

“The boy clones are not my problem.” Sarah snaps as she catches a glimpse of what’s on Delphine’s computer screen. Rudy stares back mockingly, and all Sarah can think is how she should have taken the bloody money and run months ago.

Her life would have been much simpler, running from the police instead of bloody scientists and soldiers who wanted her for her DNA. It’s only the thought of her sisters lying dead in ditches somewhere, Helena still locked up in that cage, abused and killing people because she doesn’t know better, that stops this train of thought.

Her life would have been simpler, but she’d never have been whole.

“I’m sorry, but they are.” Delphine snaps, glaring at her with eyes far colder than usual. Maybe she’d always been this way when she wasn’t trying to get into Cosima’s knickers. Sarah doesn’t trust her. She doesn’t trust anyone who _isn’t_ one of them, but she’d tried, for Cos. 

Seems that was a waste of time.

“Say again?”

“The stakes are higher than ever, Sarah. And with Rachel— _incapacitated_.”

“And what a tragic loss that is—“

“It is a loss,” Delphine interrupts. “A big one.”

Sarah stops shifting her weight from side to side at that, stills her body and glares at her. Her rage, which has been hot under her skin cools into steel, as Delphine’s comments wash over her. 

The Pro-Clone psycho is a big loss to these people, to Delphine. After everything—Cosima’s cure shattered while Kira’s bone marrow stained thousand dollar heels—Delphine can claim that Rachel is worth something.

Fe’s been right all along. Delphine cannot be trusted.

“She took my _daughter_ , Delphine. Don’t think I haven’t forgotten your part in that.”

“I—I did not know, Sarah. Please.” Delphine’s eyes start to water, as if that’s going to absolve her of her role in that in the first place. Delphine should have bloody well known better, and while she can forgive S and Fe for their parts in it, she’ll never forgive Delphine.

Forgiveness is for family. Delphine is a lot of things, but she’s certainly not that.

“She crushed my kid’s bone marrow. Did you know that?” Sarah inhales as Delphine starts trembling and shakes her head no—so they didn’t tell her everything, then. “Cosima’s only bloody chance at surviving—she smashed it under her stiletto.”

Delphine is quiet for a moment, and Sarah watches with interest as the blonde puts her mask back in place piece by piece, wiping away the tears that have fallen. When she’s collected herself, Sarah decides to say something else, to try and knock her mask back off once and for all.

Delphine doesn’t get the right to pretend as if she’s innocent in all of this.

“And Rachel bloody well tried to take my ovaries, so I’m sorry if I’m not sad about how that ended up.” 

Delphine inhales sharply and the mask falls again, her skin paler then it was a moment ago. Sarah cocks an eyebrow at the blonde’s inability to meet her gaze and reads between the lines. While Delphine may not have known about Rachel, she’d found out about _that_. DYAD was going to let Rachel take it from her and study it, _study her_.

To DYAD, she’s a bloody lab rat. To Top Side, she’s dollar signs. To Project Castor, she’s—

 _Are you trusting the wrong people?_ Rudy’s words come to her unbidden and Sarah frowns. She doesn’t trust these people. But she certainly trusts that freak and his brothers even less.

“Better for all of us that she’s dead.”

“She is alive, Sarah.” Delphine sighs, her emotions betraying her. So Delphine isn’t entirely pleased about that either now that she knows more of what Rachel’s done, interesting. “But we are unaware of how much damage she has sustained. The pencil, it ah—pierced her skull.”

“So her head’s even more damaged, then?”

“Yes.”

“Shite.”

Sarah bites her lip to stifle a laugh and wonders when she’d become someone who actively took pleasure in someone’s misery. Could be worse, she thinks, Helena would have bloody laughed at that. _Count your sisters_ —shit. She has to get back to Fe’s loft, talk to S, and figure out where in the bloody hell Helena went and who’s taken her.

She doesn’t have time for this.

“Best put her out of her misery, then, yeah?”

“Rachel—we believe that she may have known about this and kept others in the dark.” 

_There are other forces vying for our fates, Sarah._

Of course Rachel knew. She bloody would have. Sarah’s just not sure why Rachel would have let something slip to her. Maybe it was the gun she’d held to her face. It doesn’t matter. Rachel’s a vegetable in a hospital somewhere and DYAD has one of them locked up in a bloody cage.

“I still don’t see how this has fuck all to do with me, Delphine.”

“You—you signed a contract.”

This is her angle, then? A bloody piece of paper she’d been forced to sign after Rachel’d stolen Kira away from her? Is that supposed to scare her? 

“Fat lot of protection that was for Rachel.” She leaves the rest of her thoughts unsaid, but Delphine isn’t stupid, she has to know what Sarah isn’t saying.

Cosima’s love won’t save her if DYAD comes for her or Kira or anyone else in her family. Sarah will put a bullet in every last bloody one of them and this time, she’ll shoot to kill.

“Non—no. That is not, I did not mean to suggest—“

“Then what, Delphine?”

“DYAD—“

Jesus bloody Christ. That’s what it comes back to then? DYAD. Protecting DYAD, saving DYAD. Sarah’s not with DYAD and she’d rather see them all burn to the ground than sell her soul to these people who’ve done nothing for her or her sisters. They let Helena live with the Prolethians and let her become damaged enough that she killed the others, never thinking to stop her. Studied Beth enough to cause her to kill herself. Kept another one, Jennifer, locked in medical to study her when she’d become sick. Nearly broke up Alison’s marriage by paying Donnie to spy on her. Stolen Rachel away from her parents and raised her to be whatever kind of monster she’d become.

All in the name of science and profit.

“Can go to hell.” Sarah interrupts before Delphine can launch into her speech, storming off and out the door without another word.

Sarah she doesn’t give a shit who wins the bloody clone war that they have brewing with Castor, as long as they keep it the hell away from her. She’s going to find Helena and then go into hiding somewhere with the rest of them—get the fuck out while they all still can and watch the lot burn. 


End file.
